hitTesting with duplicated movie clips

Simply, I want to be able to initiate hitTest actions with a duplicated movie clip, or even be able to do any action with a duplicated clip.

I’ve been trying things like if(_root.mc1.hitTest(“mc2”+i)) or if(_root.mc1.hitTest(_root.eval(“mc2” + i))) but cant get it to work right… I know I’m missing something.